Loudspeaker drivers that can be flush-mounted within a wall or ceiling have been commercially available for many years. Such drivers have been developed to deliver high sound quality evenly throughout a room. The drivers have been designed to blend into the ceiling or wall, for example, by having paintable grilles. They are particularly applicable to home cinema systems but have also been developed to be water resistant and so can be mounted outside or in bathrooms. More recent variants have incorporated wireless capacity to permit transmission of audio information via a Bluetooth or 802.11 wireless network, for example. Nevertheless, installation of such loudspeaker drivers is a specialized and expensive task.
Traditional ceiling mounted room lighting employs an array of incandescent, halogen, fluorescent or, more recently, LED-based light sources. For example, an array of multifaceted reflector light bulbs may be installed within a plurality of (usually circular) recesses in a ceiling, the lights being typically wired in series around a lighting ring either at 240V or at 12V with a transformer being provided in the ceiling void. One of the challenges of such arrangements is ensuring that the heat generated by the lights is not excessive.
As lights become more sophisticated, with LED technologies allowing different form factors and levels of adaption, controlling the light settings, ambience and mood demands increasingly sophisticated control, either through complex (perhaps retrofitted) wall fittings, smart phone apps, or dedicated portable remote lighting controls.
A further problem with the foregoing is that a ceiling can become cluttered and aesthetically unattractive when provided with a first array of loudspeaker drivers and a second array of lights. The ceiling void is also filled with a range of mains and lower voltage cables and connectors to service the array of audio and lighting units.
For example, US2007222631 describes a device having LEDs mounted around a periphery of a central loudspeaker driver. The driver comprises both a woofer and a plurality of tweeters. The tweeters are located in front of the woofer and are positionable outside of the fixture to improve the sound quality. The resultant device provides relatively poor illumination as well as compromised sound output with a complicated and inconvenient structure.
EP 2,498,512 A2 describes a speaker apparatus that includes a diaphragm formed in an annular shape, a light emitting member and a heat controlling member conducting heat generated when the light emitting member emits light to a heat radiating section. At least part of the heat controlling member is provided on an axis including the central axis of the diaphragm and the light emitting member is disposed on an end face of the heat controlling member.
The speaker apparatus has a base which is provided as the power supply input section. The speaker apparatus 1 can be easily supplied with power by inserting the base into a power supply connector provided on a wall or ceiling. In addition, the base eliminates the need for a holding section for holding the speaker apparatus 1 on a wall or ceiling, and the speaker apparatus 1 can therefore be made compact. In other words, the device can be fitted into existing power outlets for standard light bulbs.
Nevertheless, the various devices above all represent a compromise either in terms of the lighting, the sound, or both. The present invention seeks to address these problems with the prior art.